AN NCS PREMIERE: HADIT — “THE QUEST FOR HEARTS AND CONQUEST OF TIME”

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Apr 212021
 

 

We’ve all had the experience of being misled by PR descriptions of forthcoming metallic extremity, when the night-blooming rhetoric proves to be an exaggeration or a calculated inaccuracy. And so we take such linguistic previews with a grain of salt, even when they generate a reflexive eagerness to listen.

In the case of the new album by the Italian death metal band Hadit (from Varese), the advance press variously portrays the music as “an obfuscating spell of dark cosmological death metal destruction”, “occult ritualistic divinations of total aural chaos”, “sonically annihilating and aesthetically majestic”, “impenetrable and supernatural”, and “hallucinations shrouded in mysticism and esotericism”.

How sad it would be if such evocative and enticing written flourishes weren’t well-founded! Even though Hadit’s last release, the 2015 EP Introspective Contemplation of the Microcosmus, already provided a solid foundation for those descriptions, that was six years ago after all. The question is whether their debut full-length, With Joy and Ardour Through the Incommensurable Path, lives up to the advance billing.

Well, you know where we’re going with this: The answer is Hell Yes It Does. The fact that it’s being jointly released (on May 7th) by such tasteful labels as Caligari Records, Sentient Ruin, and Terror From Hell Records is evidence of that, and so is the song we’re premiering today: “The Quest for Hearts and Conquest of Time“. Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: SNĚŤ — “FOLIVOR”

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Apr 212021
 

 

The Czech death metal band Sněť released a promising demo in 2019 (which we reviewed and streamed here.) and they had planned to follow that with an EP, but their drummer’s broken leg and a global pandemic interfered with those plans. In this case, however, there was a silver lining to the cloud, because the band used the time to write and eventually record more songs, enough to fill out a compact debut album. Entitled Mokvání V Okovech, it’s now set for release on May 14th via Blood Harvest Records on CD and vinyl LP formats, with a cassette version handled by Lycanthropic Chants in Europe and Headsplit Records in the US.

Two arresting album tracks have premiered so far, and today we bring you a third one, accompanied by a DIY video that gives you a chance to see the band in action. This song is “Folivor“. Continue reading »

AN NCS ALBUM PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): CICADA THE BURROWER — “CORPSEFLOWER”

 Album Reviews, Premieres  2 Responses »
Apr 202021
 

 

Sometime in the middle of next month billions of so-called Brood X cicadas will emerge from the earth for the first time in 17 years, blanketing areas of the eastern and midwestern United States and lending their engine-revving cacophonies to the sounds of daily life. Theories abound as to why these periodic cicadas emerge during these synchronized moments separated by so many years, but no one really knows. It’s an evolutionary mystery.

But regardless of the reason, it’s fitting that on the eve of this great emergence Cicada the Burrower will be releasing an album that in itself represents the emergence of something new — the result of years of stylistic experimentation by the band’s sole creator Cameron Davis. It certainly represents a departure for us, because although the songs on Corpseflower incorporate recognizable metal ingredients, the sounds and styles extend well beyond conventional metal boundaries, resulting in an unusual and unusually captivating collage of contrasts. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: MORBID BREATH: “ANCIENT BEASTS”

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Apr 192021
 

 

Like many metal genres, thrash manifests itself in different ways, though some would say the variations are much more limited than in the sonic realms of (for example) death and black metal. And perhaps because variations on the style seem to operate within a limited range, the quality of the riffs becomes all the more critically important.

To cut to the chase, the Swedish band Morbid Breath write riffs that are lethally infectious. And as you’ll discover from our premiere of a track off their debut EP In the Hand of the Reaper, that’s not the only thing they do really well.

The febrile, pulsating riff that launches “Ancient Beasts” sinks its hooked claws into the listener’s brain damned fast, backed by punishing drum bursts, heavy and mauling bass lines, and savage, serrated-edge death-metal growls.  When the rhythm converts to a hammering gallop the band introduce an element of the supernatural through an eerie, sinister chord progression, and there’s a glorious, swirling and screaming guitar solo in the mix, as well as jolting sequences that will kick-start your headbang reflex.

But it’s that opening riff, which repeatedly rears its venomous head, that makes the track so fiendishly addictive. The punishing heaviness and bestial vocals are sweet icing on the cake. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): PARAPHILIA — “PRIMORDIUM OF SINISTER BUTCHERY”

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Apr 192021
 

 

The Portland-based brothers SP and KRP are current members of Maestus and have joined forces before in such bands as Arkhum and Pillorian — all of them groups that we’ve devoted a lot of appreciative attention to over a long span of years. And now they’ve collaborated again in a new project named Paraphilia that embraces death metal influences of a particularly vicious and evil breed.

Their first effort under the Paraphilia name is an EP entitled Primordium of Sinister Butchery. As you’ll discover through our full streaming premiere in advance of the EP’s April 23 release, that title was well-chosen. “Primordium” refers to the first stage in the development of an organ, and the music is most definitely sinister and butchering. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ANTIMOZDEBEAST — “SINS OF THE MUSE”

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Apr 162021
 

 

We’re about to take a mad leap off our usual beaten paths, flying off a precipice into a chaotic collage of sounds that differ stylistically from the genres of our usual focus but are still extreme and, yes, still metal (at least in part).

What we’re doing is premiering a track named “Sins of the Muse” from a forthcoming EP by the Floridian project AntiMozdeBeast (the solo work of one Gabriel Palacio). Entitled The Ritual, the EP is a melting pot of industrial, harsh electronics, metal, and a general affinity for the macabre (which extends to the varying vocals). Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: STERBEFALL — “VERBOGENE GRAS”

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Apr 162021
 

 

Verlorene Zeit is the forthcoming third album by the band Sterbefall from Voronezh in central Russia. Through a hybrid of black metal and post-metal the album gives voice to feelings of despondency, depression, self-hate, and pain — feelings that also lead into expressions of rage and bitterness. The two labels that will be releasing in on April 23rd — Satanath Records (Russia) and Fog Foundation (Italy) — recommend it for fans of Dystopia Nå!, Der Weg Einer Freiheit, Amesoeurs, and Hvøsch.

Those other names used as reference points are enticing inducements for Verlorene Zeit, but even more so is the song we’re premiering today, “Verbogene Gras“. Continue reading »

AN NCS EP PREMIERE (AND A REVIEW): INCARCERATION — “EMPIRICISM”

 Album Reviews, Premieres, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Apr 142021
 

 

The part-Brazilian, part-German death metal band Incarceration have compiled a discography that includes a pair of splits, an EP, and a 2016 debut album named Catharsis. To that collection of releases they are now adding a new EP entitled Empiricism that’s set for release on Friday of this week (April 16th) by Dawnbreed Records.

On this newest effort the band’s core duo of Daniel Silva (who performs vocals and bass on this release) and Michael Koch (drums) are joined for the first time by guitarists Pedro Capaça (Violator) and Alex Obscured (Speedwhore, Obscured by Evil). Whether for that reason or others, the band seem to have thrown themselves without reservation into the most furious and unhinged side of their sound.

And thus, as you’ll discover through our full streaming premiere today, the new EP generates adrenaline-fueled mayhem with explosive, savage power, although that ruthless, visceral intensity is accompanied by spectral leads and coruscating solos that generate a frightening aura of the occult. Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: ACAUSAL INTRUSION — “QABBALISTIC CONJOINING EXISTENCE”

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Apr 132021
 

 

Daniele Valeriani‘s cover art for Acausal Intrusion‘s debut album Nulitas perceptively connects to the experience of the music. Both are malevolently frightening (even monstrously so), disturbingly surreal, and transfixing. The linguistic preview of the music offered by I, Voidhanger Records (who will release the album on May 21st) also effectively summons some of that experience:

“Acausal Intrusion play chaotic technical death metal tapping into regions beyond time and space, a vessel for ancient and unknown forces to channel into this earth, to dismantle the psyche and destroy the ego”.

And so too does the expression of the album’s concept provided by Nythroth, one of the two men who joined forces to make the music (the other goes by the name Cave Ritual):

“The acausal realm is the source of all true life. It lays beyond our causal world and is inhabited by ancient entities and chaotic energies usually too terrifying for humans to behold. Their intrusion into our reality can spark an alchemical process of transformation through which the individuals emerge on the other side with renewed self-consciousness.” Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: THE BLOOD OF CHRIST — “FORGOTTEN DIVINITY – CHAPTER 1”

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Apr 122021
 

 

The long history of The Blood of Christ (aka Blood of Christ) began in 1994 in London, Ontario, Canada, and from then until now (with one long hiatus) the band has been anchored by guitarist Jeff Longo and drummer Jason Longo, and for their newest release they have been joined by vocalist/bassist Hank Bielanski. That newest release, which dropped last December via CDN Records, is an album-length split with the Japanese extremists Vomit Remnants entitled Eastern Beast – Western Wolf.

Blood of Christ‘s four contributions to the split capture the band’s genre-bending union of death and black metal, shrouded in dark, epic atmospheres and lyrically focused on subjects often atypical for such diabolical sounds.

For the first of their songs on the split, “Forgotten Divinity Chapter 1“, the band resurrected a song that was first included in a 1998 demo and breathed new life into it — and today we’re presenting it through a new lyric video. Continue reading »

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